The Dog
We have a little Corgi Cross, who I have mentioned before.

He is very quick learner so we have taught him all sorts of tricks, one of which is to "shut the door". This means I stand next to the door I want him to shut and he jumps up at it and give it a good shove, and so closes it.

One sunny Sunday a few months back I am standing in the kitchen eating a sandwich with the back door open and Al(for that is his name) looning about in the garden chasing phantom cats.

With imaginary cat caught, I watch from the other end of the kitchen as, without any provocation or instruction, he completes the following actions:

1: Walks in and turns around to face the door.
2: Jumps up and gives it a push.
3: Watches the door as it swings to a semi closed position.
4: Hits the door again to properly shut it.
5: Toddles off into the living room to eat a hypothetical rabbit (his rawhide chew)

I stood there with a massive smile on my face.

I now hear him do this from the living room almost every night, and it still amazes me.
(stubbledchin, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 13:26, 4 replies)

Any tale of dogs...
...with daft levels of intelligence (?) gets a click from me.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 13:43, closed)

Aye - me too.
*click*
(god_is_a_ghoti Carpe Deum., Fri 6 Aug 2010, 15:28, closed)

my cat
puts himself to bed every night. he's a tinker, but has the clevers
(Monkeystrumpet monkey. Monkey, MONKEY!!!, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 16:10, closed)

My grandad's collie, Gwilym
used to do something quite similar.

Would open doors by jumping up and catching the handle with his paw. This annoyed my grandad because he'd scratch the doors with his claws while he did it, and come upstairs and wake him up at 6am because he was bored.
Anyway to remedy this he spent an hour switching the handles on all the doors in the house so that they would need to be pushed upwards. Gwilym solved it in about five seconds by pushing the handles up with his nose, so my exasperated grandad switched 'em back and hung ropes from the handles for the dog to use to get around.

I miss that dog. Used to have a bowl of cornflakes with milk for his breakfast, thought he was people.
(Sundayturkey has the biggest mug of tea, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 16:33, closed)